How, through tragedy, Metamorphoses teaches its audience to love
Metamorphoses – a play by Mary Zimmerman and staged by the Victoria College Drama Society, January 22–24, 2026
You’ve heard the names, you know the stories. But have you ever seen them performed around a giant ball pit? From January 22nd to 24th, Victoria College Drama Society (VCDS) and director Andrea Perez staged Metamorphoses, a play originally written and directed by Mary Zimmerman based on Ovid’s classic myths. The VideoCabaret Theatre in Leslieville offered itself as Ancient Greece when I saw the play at its Saturday matinee performance. Metamorphoses comprises ten scenes and a dance interlude featuring different Greek myths. Although the stories themselves are quite different, their unflinching explorations of human desire and truth unite them in a compelling narrative arc. The VCDS production blends modern and classic elements, creating a story that holds true to Zimmerman’s production while adding comedic, lighthearted elements to its emotional depth.
The aforementioned ball pit grounds the play and offers a different function in each tale, adding a playful component to stories mainly centred on tragedy. Zimmerman’s original production features a real swimming pool filled with water, but the more practical ball pit reinforces the play’s juxtapositions between innocence and sin, joy and despair. VCDS leans into this contrast by offering comedic pockets in an otherwise dramatically heavy set of stories, labelling gods with sparkling sashes and purposely costumey props, like an inflatable inner tube for the pool and big flower glasses for Apollo, god of the sun.
While each actor was individually powerful, their performances came together to create immense emotional depth that drew viewers in. Portrayals of Orpheus (Gaby Bonduc) and Myrhha (Micah MikoLevine), specifically, made a lasting impression on me. The stories of these characters brim with agony, and the actors rose to the challenge, displaying inner turmoil and stark vulnerability–from Orpheus’ unending grief to Myrhha’s warring shame and desire. The latter performance captivated me so wholly that I physically cringed each time she returned to her father’s bedroom. The show’s lighting crew, Ale Benavides Loo and Shunsho Ando Heng, bathed the stage in vivid violets, sombre blues, and violent reds to match the play’s tonal shifts, immersing the actors and adding continuity between each scene fragment.
The dance interlude carries particular weight in the show as a welcome breather between the first and second acts. Pygmalion and Galatea’s story is the dancers’ first routine: a sculptor falls in love with his creation who then becomes animate, thanks to Aphrodite. Galatea (Maria Miroshnichenko) dances en pointe throughout, displaying poise and fluidity in her arms as she performs the graceful choreography by Noam Citrin. The actors and dancers convey wordless emotion through their movements and expressions, leaving the audience space to reflect between a flurry of stories. Metamorphoses reveals the intimacy of being human, of belonging to a collective whose flaws unite us. As Perez’s director’s note states, the play begs us to choose love and community in a world filled with the very violence present in each myth. The play ends with the story of Baucis and Philemon, a couple who, when given the opportunity to have any desire granted by the gods, wish simply to die together. Metamorphoses leaves the audience with one final act of humanity, reminding us that even in a world full of tragedy, we can choose to see the goodness.